In recent years, there has been rapid development in the field of consumer electronics for wireless communication. This development has been fueled in part by lower-cost, higher performance wireless transceivers for use in consumer electronics. Many improvements in wireless transceivers have become available as a result of advances in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. In particular, many signal-generation components of wireless transceivers may now be integrated in CMOS, reducing the cost of wireless transceivers and, in turn, consumer electronics.
However, some components of wireless transceivers have not been amenable to integration in CMOS. One such component is a power amplifier, which has proven difficult to implement in CMOS as a result of inherent limitations of CMOS transistors as well as the inherent limitations of the power amplifier themselves. As one example, current power amplifiers produce harmonics (e.g., frequency components at integer multiples of the output frequency) that may need to be removed using one or more discrete filters that cannot be integrated in CMOS. Thus, even if integration of current power amplifiers in CMOS became feasible, the discrete filters required to remove the harmonics produced by such power amplifiers would remain an issue for complete integration. Accordingly, an improved power amplifier that can more easily be integrated in CMOS is desired.